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Spices for Salted Beef

A blend of dried herbs and spices mixed with salt for seasoning salted beef.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Spices for Salted Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spice mix

  1. Procure the dried herbs listed.

  2. Pound each herb separately in a mortar, then sift the pounded herbs through a fine sieve.

Store and use

  1. Mix all the herbs together and store in tightly corked bottles.

  2. When ready to use, add 1 ounce of the spice mix to 1 pound of salt.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Sage + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Sage + rosemarytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together465 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1,8-cineol (eucalyptus, camphor).

  4. Thyme + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Thyme + rosemarytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Dried thyme
Adds an earthy, aromatic herbal flavour to the salt cure.
Dried sage
Contributes a savoury, slightly bitter aroma that complements the beef.
White pepper
Adds a sharp, warm heat that stays mild compared with black pepper.
Dried bay leaves
Provides a subtle resinous, herbal aroma to the blend.
Dried cloves
Adds a strong, warm, sweet-spicy aroma in small amounts.
Salt
Carries the spice mix and seasons the beef through the cure.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (thyme, sage, nutmeg, clove, mace, marjoram, rosemary):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against thyme, sage, nutmeg, clove, mace, marjoram, rosemary. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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